Actualis



November 2010

Are you rich?

It’s all relative.

We all know where Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and a few other multibillionaires rank on the global rich list:  they trade first place back and forth from year to year. But have you ever wondered where you rank?

The people behind www.globalrichlist.com had the entertaining idea of developing a tool that lets you see the approximate position of every person based on annual income. Enter your salary, and one click will show you where you rank in terms of financial wealth.

Do you earn $40,000 a year? Congratulations! That puts you in the tiny slice of 4% of the population comprising the richest people in the world. Clearly, the aim of the site is to demonstrate the extent to which our industrialized societies provide us with high incomes compared to what workers in the rest of the world earn – and to urge us to share our wealth through various charitable organizations.    

If you want to know where you stand compared to your fellow Canadians, you will find various indicators relevant to our own society on the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada Web site [www.hrsdc.gc.ca]. For instance, in 2007, median after-tax income was $61,800 a year for Canadian families, and $24,200 a year for single people.

It’s all relative…